Figure 1.-- I'm not sure of the date here, but I think it's around 1910. It's from a rare series of "London Life" postcards made by Rotary. They recorded the real working environment of London; no fancy fake frills of a perceived notion of those who had jobs in the city. Plenty of the cards in the series are of boys and teenagers. There is no doubt this image was taken on the north side of the Thames Embankment -- it is instantly recognisable. That may even be Cleopatra's Needle in the background. This would place the photograph very close to Charing Cross station.

I believe that there were also newsboys in England. We have seen images of boys selling newspapers in England. It seems to us that many English images show men selling newspapers, more so than in America. There may be a time factor here. I think before World War I (1914-18) boys selling newspapers on the stree were fairly common. After the War we mostly see men. Child labor and school attendance laws may be a factor here. And these laws may have affected how newspapers were sold. School attendance laws would have made it difficult for boys to sell from street corners because of the time factor, but they would not have precluded paper routes before or after school. An English reader writes, "Boys most definitely did the majority of paper-selling over here in the UK. I have several images of this; the one difference is that often they tended to be just a couple of years older than in the US. Mostly they look to be in their early teens."

Created: 5:29 PM 2/25/2007
Last updated: 5:29 PM 2/25/2007